guardians of the gilded gang

notwithstanding the outstanding differences
between Bernie Sanders
and the pandering clowns
in their gas guzzling car,
the debates reaffirmed the lockstep,
preordained,
unquestioning adherence
that girds the gilded rule:
if you vote for a
Democrat or a Republican,
you are voting for war.

elegy for a withered harvest

the trail of torture
traced through the sleek,

redacted shadows

from its beta testing emissaries

and coup-installed thugs

back to the blood-soaked and belligerent

lawless land of its devising

has had quite a run

and found its way

into every sadistic nook.

just ask the whistleblowers,

the hapless innocents

rotting in Guantanamo,

the ailing black panthers

in their isolating cages,

the fallen emancipators in Egypt,

or the doctors locked up

for healing the heroes of Bahrain.

it continues to pay out its

twisted dividends,

much like the land mines

still maiming the future of Southeast Asia.

or the harvest of our terror

coming home to roost:

in the huddled masses scouring in their tides

for some unfenced remnant of humane humanity.

in the falling-like-flies,

riddled and repentant veterans

and afraid-of-the-sky children.

and in the tanks and dazzling ray guns

brandished in the fists

of terrorists, drug lords,

and small town cops.

the amnesia that curiously afflicts

America's entitled establishment,

all its predators, peddlers, and purveyors

of mind-numbing pablum

fails to blot out the shell-shocked reality,

its weeping roots,

or its cancerous ramifications.

the toll of our relentless

Middle East aggression

is perhaps a million dead.

another half million

longed-for children

were slowly sacrificed

to our sanctified, sanitized sanctions.

only a fraction

of what we managed

to achieve in Southeast Asia.

but the mongers are not idle

and more targets tantalize

on the yawning horizon.

anyway, they stopped counting

their corporeal crops

when they embedded our journalists,

yanking the covers over shying eyes

as they authorized the sleep of souls.

such soothing slumber eludes me

as i listen to the crowding voices

wailing in the wretched wind,

seeping through the sound bites

telling silenced, severed stories

of inessential, foreign lives.

thus lonely-eyed and weary

i await the awakening;

a bitter dawning of lamentation,

when the depth of our

incalculable loss

is finally understood.

and i wonder at the lavish strains

of righteous indignation

spilling into streets and tv screens,

marching in step with its

convenient consciousless denial

and privileged self-focus;

parading in simulcast

sanctimonious solidarity

to affirm the untrammeled right

of the one true religion

to profit from plunder

and express its exceptional disdain.

how can the home of the brave

house such a surfeit of uninformed fear,

plunging collective cowardly heads

in smug layers of self-inflicted

silken sediment

hiding from the knowledge

of its own pitiless, unprovoked crimes?

and how can a land of the free

tolerate such a self-destructive tethering,

the callous erecting

of blinders and barbed wire

on its utterly defenseless

self-impaling borders?

- Evan Hawthorn, the 17^th of October, 2015

love's lingering labours (an excerpt from my novella-poem 'Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons')

(in the middle of the night, in the enchanted arbor, Sylvana is mourning the apparent death
of Sludge White (aka Princess Pasty); collapsed in the shadow of her beloved's bier, draped
in its glowing pink roses.  but the princess, having already experimented with dream travelling,
is attempting to transcend the borders of her subliminal state through the seams of sleep.)
********
the vigil of braided incandescence

was swimming through a lens of intervening grief.

for Sylvana resisted acquiescence

clutching tattered hope like an obstinate leaf;

unwilling to renounce unattainable love

achingly at hand, yet out of her reach,

debris of her dreams and crashing emotions
stranded on a shifting, time-encrusting beach.

kneeling in the mingling amethyst shadows

where residual loss had managed to seep,

she ceded reason to the crickets' drone

and reeling into rhythm, rocked herself to sleep.

a whispered silhouette darted through the arbor

as an ivory owl glided by,

dazzled by the moon's commiserating rays

stringing the pearls that trickled from her eye.

the dream began with a flurry of roses

constantly altering an ambient glow,

diaphanous swirls soundlessly descending,

pink satin petals collecting like snow.

and the princess was buffeted by flowers,

exalted by the deer's devotional dance,

held aloft like a venerated icon

that skirted the earth in a somnolent trance.

Sylvana was perched upon her shoulder

rooted in the angles of a spindly legged bird,

her impassive awareness in dreamtime

readily accepting what reason deemed absurd.

and her heart was beating with wings of its own

at strange liquid words her beloved had said,

like sunlight spilling out of the horizon

leaking tidings that her future wasn't dead.

the herd revived their beguiling patterns,

that same arcane ballet she'd seen them do for Hearn

repeating an ineffable lesson

some lyrical muse must have thought she ought to learn.

her fellow birds delighted in circles

attuned to a cadence beyond the range of sound,

scudding crinkled leaves into a whirlwind,

redistributing the surface of the ground.

a tremor shivered her ambling foundation

as Sludge White abruptly opened her eyes,

flooding the warmth of a riveting gaze

on her dauntless protector in avian guise.

and it suddenly dawned on Sylvana

that this abstract tapestry was framed for her sake,

a subtle stitching of sentient seams

contrived by a presence compellingly awake.

arousing the rosy, silk-strewn ether

a brush of Pasty's fingers dusted off a kiss.

and at that precise moment Sylvana awoke
tossed up on a wave of exquisite bliss.

********
- Evan Hawthorn, the 9th of October, 2015
(an excerpt from 'Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons')

moose and squirrel visual aid

for those stymied by my oh, so subtle sarcasm,
here, snapped on the day he brought his famous
Moose-and-Squirrel visual aid to the UN,
is a photo of BoBo-the-nettled-Yahoo:

no apology

evidently, this man's family weren't "folks", so there's nothing to be gained politically
by apologizing for "taking them out".
when President Obama responded to Chelsea Manning's revelations by arresting him,
i grasped that he valued honesty as little as the lives of Iraqis.  when he spent more
than an hour on the phone convincing Yemen's president to keep the journalist who
revealed our drones in jail an extra year, his vengeful predilections were made clear.
all in all, i'd say he's eminently qualified to lead a morally bankrupt, terror enhancing
country like ours.  i draw no comfort from the notion that a dishonest monster is better
than a blatant, Republican one.

our glorious leaders and theirs

once again the rampant, imperial arrogance of our glorious leaders
has turned Vladimir Putin into the "good guy".

a manipulative dictator who rationally
protects the lives of human beings
is surely preferable to a clutch of corporate operatives
convinced of their infallible superiority
tearing up impoverished countries in the service
of the financial and political "interests" of global corporations.

the Curmudgeons are introduced (an excerpt from "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons")

the primal mantle devoured the cottage,

erasing the fleeting distinctions of form.

the chorus of insects wavered in waves,

like patterns of rain in the currents of a storm.

the penitent clock told the ticking tale

of the untended moments of unheeded time.

and a discarded heart lay soundly sleeping,

her garments in tatters, her face smudged with grime.

faint embers popped up in a muted succession,

scattering glimmer on emerald leaves;

spilling luminescence in delicate streams,

filtered through windows beneath the dusky eaves.

the princess abruptly flashed open her eyes

and frantically scoured the star-glistened gloom;

for it dawned on her that those whispers were real,

and surely rustling in that very room.

"sleeping!" hissed a voice.  "of all the brazen cheek!

and what in blazes has happened to the place?

how could the watchrug and battlerack vanish?

it's not in their nature to not leave a trace."

"keep your voice down!" urged a lilting undertone.

"she's most likely some relation of the king's.

that frock she's wearin' cost more than you can count!

i fancy her bleedin' 'orse has gilded wings!"

"easy now, Mock!" said a dulcet companion.

"that wretched dress is coming apart in strands.

imagine what the poor dear must have gone through

before the fates placed her safely in our hands!"

"oh, stuff a sock in it!" the first voice snarled.

"she's one of them, Sappy.  why else would she glow?

no doubt the king's soldiers are combing the forest.

when they find us, you'll be the first to go!"

soft sounds of sobbing emerged from the shadows.

"there's subtlety for you." said the one called Mock.

"our Rashful's in a class on 'is ownsome.

'e dices apples with an anvil and a rock."

"watch it, brother Mock, you're treading on thin ice!"

Rashful retorted with a tongue edged in steel

bloating the air with menacing tension,

a blustering infection bubbling on a heel.

a stifled gasp cut the conflict in its tracks

and seven hooded heads turned with one accord.

Sludge White was riveted by attention

their focus combining to forge an optic sword.

she breathed in slowly, while gathering her wits

trusting that the deer would somehow keep her calm.

for the well of empathy bided with her

providing unspoken, reassuring balm.

Sappy was the first to sever the silence.

"since she's awake we may as well have some light."

then orange flames flickered and danced on the walls

and the contents of the room loomed into sight.

Pasty's eerie day spent inside the cottage

had depleted her supply of startled cries.

so when it turned out the candles were self-starting,

she didn't even register surprise.

"what are you doing here?" Rashful bludgeoned the point,

shedding more luster on his blunted charm.

"i'm fleeing from the queen's wrath" was her answer.

"by my oath i didn't mean you any harm."

"and why would 'er precious self not fancy you?

'as 'er Majesty been blinded by your glare?"

Mock was not disposed to cut her any slack,

and he hardened his brow with an ice-bound stare.

she swallowed back her timid trepidation.

"i've no clue why a price was placed on my head.

yet the wind and these woods interceded.

were it not for their shelter i'd likely be dead."

there was something compelling in this statement,

earnestly exposing her perilous case.

Sappy's heart was opened immediately,

and a thaw trickled down Mock's cold flinty face.

"but how did our cottage come to look like this?"

Rashful proceeded with his obdurate air.

behind him two others gradually emerged.

there was something not quite right about the pair.

the hands of the first one never stopped probing

the personal space of whoever was near.

the other had oil oozing from his pores,

and suggested something naughty with his leer.

"sit down my dear, and tell us all about it"

said Sappy politely, pointing at the couch.

"please don't mind Rashful, or let him offend you.

he can't help himself, he's a natural grouch."

at this Rashful bridled and folded his arms,

scrunching his face in a glowering scowl.

as the others took seats in the candlelight,

rueful reproaches were broached by an owl.

versed in her father's political parlance

of splintered nuance and manifold meanings

the princess designed a diplomatic pitch

to provoke the most lenient of leanings.

the scent of her mother seeping recollection

spilled from a quiver, deep within the well,

underpinning her pressing entreaty

with the loving embrace of a lingering spell.

"bewildered by your savvy appliances,

and dismayed by their animated defense;

we sought to diminish the presence of threats,

thereby committing unintended offense.

when we first encountered your charming cottage,

we overlooked the potential of tenants.

thus my friends and i humbly beseech you, kind sirs,

to accept our regrets and our penance."

at the close of her speech she lowered her head,

somberly waiting for her hosts to respond.

the one who'd been crying had never let up,

and now he was sopped in a slough of despond.

Sappy squeezed tears from his dripping handkerchief,

and winking at the princess, passed him a pail.

"but my dear you haven't introduced yourself!

what is your name, child, and from whence do you hail?"

"i'm called Sludge White.  i was sired by the king,

and kept in the keep of his castle since birth.

my mother, his first wife, long since departed

the veil of illusion that fetters the earth."

this news gave the room an electrical jolt,

wiring its currents with overwrought thought.

seven pairs of eyes swapped eloquent glances,

fraught with furtive drifts, surreptitiously caught.

Mock rose to his feet and doffed his yellow hood,

a crimson blush suggesting he was bashful.

"this chatty chappie's Sappy.  i go by Mock.

and i dare say you're acquainted with Rashful."

Sappy presented a splendid courtly bow,

while Rashful let slip a perfunctory nod.

"this one wailin' in 'is pail we call Weepy,

a sodden and soggy, saturated sod.

that's Sleazy in the corner next to Gropey,

who'd better watch out, or 'e'll wind up stumpy.

the bloke what's leanin' on the back of the couch

is the shapeless wonder our lot calls Lumpy."

"i'm pleased to meet you" said Weepy with a smile,

as he wistfully wiped his blubbering eyes.

how he managed a supply of fresh hankies,

or kept his clothes dry, one can only surmise.

Sleazy's wrinkles crinkled in a wanton wink.

Gropey hid his hands with indelicate haste.

a form-challenged fellow quite covered in bumps

did his best to bend an improbable waist.

Pasty curtsied to each one in succession,

deftly evading Gropey's dexterous hands;

then attempted an armistice with Rashful,

by plucking on a string from overheard strands.

"not meaning to eavesdrop i happened to note

your concern for your watchrug and battlerack.

i believe my friends could help you retrieve them

from the cleft of a cliff, ensconced in a sack."

Rashful's jaw dropped and he might have been nasty,

but happily Sappy said something instead.

"there'll be time enough for all that in the morning.

it's awfully late, we ought to be abed.

we'll push two or three of ours together, love.

this couch has an off-putting reputation.

on the morrow we'll build you a four-poster,

and assemble a cliff-bound deputation."

so with stretches and yawns they mounted the stairs,

and the flickering candles promptly went out.

and the skulking rat in the pay of the queen

stealthily slinked up the slanted gutter spout.

then the crickets lost interest in their love songs.

and the glitter faded from the starlight's beams.

and the deepest dark that comes just before dawn

descended on the sleepers, dimming their dreams.

far away in a dank, forsaken cellar

a rapacious monarch reposed on her throne;

absently probing the reticent distance,

her reflection glaring back with eyes of stone.

to her oft-repeated ravenous queries,

the mirror conjured a brooding, opaque mist;

rendering naught but inscrutable silence

to appease the rampant menace of her fist.

- Evan Hawthorn, the 4th of October, 2015